John Klum, who left the city of Portland’s fire bureau in June, collected more in retirement payouts than he did in base pay salary last year.

Indeed, Klum’s $325,172 compensation led the city’s list of employee pay during the 2011-12 fiscal year. Klum’s package included $159,113 in base pay and $166,058 in “payout” money. The latter category includes accrued vacation, sick leave and severance money for employees who retire, resign or are severed, according to the city’s Human Resources Bureau.

That’s just one of the takeaways from the just-released list of Portland employee salaries that we’ve posted on the Business Journal website. Today, we’re posting figures for Portland city workers. Friday, we’ll present the same salaries for those employed by Metro, the area’s regional government. Next week, we’ll roll out the numbers for Multnomah County workers.

On the city side, 10 employees grabbed more than $100,000 in benefit payouts during the last fiscal year, compared to five a year earlier. Each worker earning a six-figure payout is or was employed by the police or fire department.

All told, the city’s payroll rose between the 2011 and 2012 fiscal years, from $421.4 million to $437.2 million. Yet the total number of city employees dropped from 9,038 to 8,934.